For many years, homeowners and others have decorated their homes by applying stenciled designs to the walls. Usually, such designs are applied around the crown of a room where the walls of the room meet the ceiling. However, stenciled designs can and are applied to other portions of the walls and, indeed, to other surfaces in the home as well.
Stenciled designs typically are applied to a surface using one or more stencils made of paperboard or plastic. These stencils are formed with cutout areas that correspond to various portions of the design to be created. In applying the design, the stencil or stencils usually are taped or otherwise secured to the surface where the stenciled design is to be applied. Paint can then be applied through the cutout areas of the stencil onto the surface. Commonly, the paint is applied through the cutout areas with a brush or a sponge. However, paint is sometimes applied by different means such as, for example, by spraying the paint through the cutout areas or by rolling the paint over the stencil and through the cutout areas. In any event, the paint is applied to the surface through the cutout areas of a stencil, whereupon the stencil is removed leaving the resulting design on the surface.
In some instances, the entire design to be applied is represented by cutout areas in a single stencil. When using these stencils, paint of one color is applied through designated cutout areas corresponding to that color. The stencil is then washed, removed, or cleaned, and reattached to the surface so that paint of another color can be applied through other ones of the cutout areas in the stencil. This process is repeated with the various colors of the design until the completed multi-color design has been applied to the surface through all of the cutout areas in the stencils. As a guide to mixing and matching colors and applying them through the appropriate cutout areas, such stencils are usually provided with a printed facsimile of how the stenciled design should look when applied to the surface. As the design is being applied, constant reference back to the printed facsimile is made in order to gauge and judge the proper color mixes and positions for creating the completed design.
While the foregoing method has been used successfully for many years in applying stenciled designs to surfaces, it nevertheless embodies certain inherent problems and shortcomings. For example, the process of applying a particular color only through certain ones of the cutout areas can be tedious and the user must be careful to apply a particular color through only the proper corresponding cutout areas. In many instances, mistakes can be made in this regard affecting the final appearance of the stenciled design. An additional problem with such stencils resides in the fact that a user must refer constantly to a printed facsimile of the finished design as the design is applied in order to judge the appropriate hues, balances, and mixes of colors. This can make color balancing difficult since the characteristics of an applied color must be visually estimated by reference to a separate printed facsimile. Finally, it is not always a simple matter with such stencils to align the stencil precisely from color application to color application and resulting misalignment can affect the look and quality of the finished design.
Even when multiple stencils are used to apply the design, many of the problems with single stencil applications still exist. While the use of multiple stencils addresses some of the problems of cleaning the stencil between each application, the colors applied with each stencil still must be estimated by visual reference to a printed facsimile of the final design. Alignment of the successive stencils in the set can also be a problem and the appearance of the final design is highly dependent upon the skill of the user in interpreting and matching the colors, hues, intensities and tints as they are displayed on the printed facsimile.
A general consequence of the use of prior art stenciling methods has been that skillful application of stenciled designs comes only after substantial experience in applying the designs. It has been difficult in the past for a novice or unexperienced person to apply the designs with the same quality results as an experienced application. For this reason, some who consider themselves insufficiently skilled have hired professionals at substantial cost to apply their stenciled designs.
Attempts have been made to address some of the problems associated with prior art stenciling methods. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,444,860 of H. Summer attempts to address the alignment and registration problems associated with multiple stencil sets by providing a holder for each of the sequential stencils in the set. Each stencil is aligned precisely in the holder and the holder can be taped or otherwise secured to the wall so that the elements of the final design are properly aligned. While the H. Summer device indeed helps in aligning various stencils of a stencil set, it nevertheless does not resolve the problems associated with judging the qualities and characteristics of each color from a separate printed facsimile of the final design. Thus, substantial skill and experience is still required to produce a high quality design.
Accordingly, there exists a need for an improved stenciling method and apparatus that addresses the problems and shortcomings of the prior art.